"Yes, and I'm sorry for it."
"All smoke, my dear boy, all smoke. Colonel Clive has been thinking it over, and has decided to disregard the decision of the Council and cross the river at sunrise to-morrow."
Desmond could not refrain from flinging up his hat and performing other antics expressive of delight; he was caught in the act by Clive himself, who was returning to his tent.
"You're a madcap, Burke," he said. "Come to my tent."
He employed Desmond during the next hour in writing orders to the officers of his force. This consisted of about 900 Europeans, 200 topasses, a few lascars, and some 2,000 sepoys. Eight six-pounders and two howitzers formed the whole of the artillery. Among the Europeans were about fifty sailors, some from the King's ships, some from merchantmen. Among the latter were Mr. Toley and Bulger, whose excellent service in capturing the Good Intent had enforced their request to be allowed to accompany the little army.
Shortly before dawn on June 22 Clive's men began to cross the river. The passage being made in safety, they rested during the hot hours, and resumed their march in the evening amid a heavy storm of rain, often having to wade waist-high the flooded fields. Soon after midnight the men, drenched to the skin, reached a mango-grove somewhat north of the village of Plassey: and there, as they lay down in discomfort to snatch a brief sleep before dawn, they heard the sound of tom-toms and trumpets from the Nawab's camp three miles away.
"'Tis a real comfort, that there noise," remarked Bulger, as he stirred the camp-fire with his hook. Desmond had come to bid him good-night. "Ay, true comfort to a sea-goin' man like me. For why? 'Cos it makes me feel at home. Why, I don't sleep easy if there en't some sort o' hullabaloo--wind or wave, or, if ashore, cats a-caterwaulin'. No, Mr. Subah, Nawab, or whatsomdever you call yourself, you won't frighten Bill Bulger with your tum-tum-tumin'. I may be wrong, Mr. Burke, which I never am, but there'll be tum-tum-tum of another sort to-morrer."
The grove held by Clive's troops was known as the Laksha Bagh--the grove of a hundred thousand trees. It was nearly half a mile long and three hundred yards broad. A high embankment ran all round it, and beyond this a weedy ditch formed an additional protection against assault. A little north of the grove, on the bank of the river Cossimbazar, stood a stone hunting-box belonging to Siraj-uddaula. Still farther north, near the river, was a quadrangular tank, and beyond this a redoubt and a mound of earth. The river there makes a loop somewhat like a horseshoe in shape, and in the neck of land between the curves of the stream the Nawab had placed his intrenched camp.
His army numbered nearly 70,000 men, of whom 50,000 were infantry, armed with matchlocks, bows and arrows, pikes and swords. He had in all fifty-three guns, mounted on platforms drawn by elephants and oxen. The most efficient part of his artillery was commanded by Monsieur Sinfray, who had under him some fifty Frenchmen from Chandernagore. The Nawab's vanguard consisted of 15,000 men under his most trusty lieutenants, including Manik Chand and Mir Madan. Rai Durlabh, the captor of Cossimbazar, and two other officers commanded separate divisions.
Dawn had hardly broken on June 23, King George's birthday, when Mir Madan, with a body of picked troops, 7,000 foot, 5,000 horse, and Sinfray's artillery, moved out to the attack with great clamour of trumpets and drums. The remainder of the Nawab's army formed a wide arc about the north and east of the English position. Nearest to the grove was Mir Jafar's detachment. The English were arranged in four divisions, under Majors Killpatrick, Grant, and Coote, and Captain Gaupp. These had taken position in front of the embankment, the guns on the left, the Europeans in the centre, the sepoys on the right. Sinfray's gunners occupied an eminence near the tank, about two hundred yards in advance of the grove, and made such good play that Clive, directing operations from the Nawab's hunting-box, deemed it prudent to withdraw his men into the grove, where they were sheltered from the enemy's fire. The Nawab's troops hailed this movement with loud shouts, of exultation, and, throwing their guns forward, opened a still more vigorous cannonade, which, however, did little damage.